Sunday, June 15, 2003

ANOTHER WELL WRITTEN PIECE from the Washington Post. Can't tell if these are our guys...but they are doing exactly what the 1st Brigade is doing.

One high point of the day, says McConnell, the platoon's top sergeant, was seeing Pfc. Shaun Jones -- only four months out of boot camp -- handle an Iraqi who aggressively got in his face.

It was dusk when the man strode up to Jones and began yelling at him.

Jones, 22, from Bozeman, Mont., thought the man was drunk. First he yelled at him, telling him to back off, he recalls. Then he waved with his hand. When the man still kept on walking at him and shouting, the private took half a step back and brought his M-4 carbine up to the ready stance -- that is, elevated three-quarters of the way, but still maintaining eye contact over its top.

At that point, says a pleased McConnell, "the guy backed right off." The private, he says, had shown measured escalation at the smallest possible level, one-on-one.